Facebook Inappropriate

I love Facebook. I guess you could call me a bit of a power user of Facebook. It's sort of my happy place; I go there to chat with friends who make me laugh.  It's taken years of trial and error to get to the point that I don't think I make too many faux pas on Facebook.  No one is perfect but I think I am able to reap the benefits of Facebook without some of the pain and aggravation that can be caused by having written conversations with people you don't see very often or don't know as well as you should in order to have certain types of discussions.

When I first started using Facebook I wrote very little. Then I probably wrote too much.  As I got re-acquainted with college and childhood friends with whom I had lost touch I made the HUGE mistake of arguing politics, social/economic issues, and religion on the site.  Several people "un friended" me which is always a little hurtful even if you weren't really friends in the first place but you thought you were because you connected in the friendly confines of a popular social media site.  I would like to think that the people who unfriended me probably wouldn't have done so if we had the exact same discussions/debates in person that we mistakenly had in writing because, in person, you can calibrate your comments based on body language and other cues that you just can't see on the internet.  C'est la vie.  We make mistakes. We learn from mistakes.

But that brings me to the point (if I ever really have one at all) of this post.  This is my list of inappropriate things that some people do but shouldn't do on Facebook.  This may apply to Twitter and other social media sites too but Facebook is the only one I use regularly.

Here are a few things that will trip you up, alienate some of your friends, and generally cause you aggravation on social media.  No good can come from doing these things:

1. Posting polarizing political rants. (unless you are only friends with folks who see things your way)

2. Posting polarizing religious rants.  (unless you are only friends with folks who see things your way)

3. Posting strong views on social/economic issues that we read about in the news.   

Commenting on news stories is OK but I have come to realize that I don't always know what is fully accurate information and what isn't because members of the media don't always research issues and/or don't post all sides of a story. And I am too lazy to do the research myself.  I have gotten myself in some hot water a few times with this one when I thought I was posting my common sense view point.  Big oops. 

4. Posting photos of the incision from your surgery. 

5. Posting photos of animals being abused (PETA and ASPCA have some awful videos).

6. Ranting about your employer.

7. Writing or posting photos that describe your awesome life if you have a lot of friends whose lives are not so awesome.  

I once had someone unfriend me because I complained on Facebook about the amount of time it took the valet to bring my car to me after a charity event.  The childhood friend who re-connected with me on FB after many years was upset because in her words, "she would pee her pants if the worst thing that happened to her in a day was that the valet was late with her car".  Lesson learned. I don't complain about my first world problems anymore unless I do it in jest.

8.  Posting your trip itinerary when you are traveling.  

Unless someone is staying in your home while you are gone you are begging thieves to rob you.

9. Writing about very private aspects of your kid's lives.  

Don't post your young daughter's bra size even if you think its cute.

10. Nude pictures of your young kids.  

Oh I know you think those bathtub photos of your baby are so cute or the photo of your kid dropping his pants at McDonald's is funny but that stuff can come back and bite you in the ass later on.  Keep it in your private family album.

11. Photos from your recent childbirth experience.

12. Ranting about how much you hated high school and some of the specific people you grew up with.

13. Divulging your family's dirty laundry.  Even the family members you hate and who aren't on FB.

14. Pictures of you and your friends getting obviously drunk or high.

15. Posting photos of the horrible injury you just sustained while you are waiting for the ambulance to arrive.

16. Leaving comments on someone else's post that are insulting or combative to the other people who have also commented on the thread.
I unfriended one of my siblings after he repeatedly started arguments with my friends on FB.  I let it go for a long time but finally he got so insulting and combative for no good reason at all that I had to cut him from my friend list. I got tired of apologizing to my friends.

I guess the good thing about having made some of the mistakes listed above is that I have pretty well culled out my friend list and now the people with whom I communicate regularly on FB know me and like me for who I am.  They know I would never knowingly be mean or unkind and that my political views, while maybe different from theirs, are not rooted in unkindness or intolerance.  So maybe making lots of inappropriate mistakes is a good thing?